Acer Travelmate 4220 heatsink paste question

Hi I'm working on my Sons Acer Travelmate 4220 model ZB2
It had been dropped and he sent it away and they replaced the motherboard but it would run for about 10 minutes and stop then when he started it the laptop would only run for about a minute unless it cooled down then it would run a little longer. He had so much trouble with the repairers he gave up and bought another laptop.

Now well over 12 months later I have it and as it sounds like a heat problem I have removed the fan and heatsink assembley and have blown out some fluff (Maybe not enough to cause problems but significant) but my question is the heat sink has a copper part that covers a chip and there is no paste or thermal pad there, just bare copper I searched the net and found another two second hand ones for sale and they didn't have any paste or thermal pad in that one place either. Here is a link to a second hand one and if you click to enlarge it you can see the top right hand arm doesn't have a pad or any residual paste like the CPU
http://www.lappy.com.au/product_info.ph ... ts_id=1938
I believe this heatsink is also used on the Acer Aspire 5600

I would appreciate any input before I try it with some thermal paste

 

Hi there,

I'd be inclined to say that thermal paste should have no derogatory effects on the ability of a heatsink to work so would give it a try.
It certainly cant make it work any worse!

Paul :ugeek:

p.s. I updated your link as the one you posted didn't seem to work, just double check that I have got the correct part that you were looking at.

 

Thanks Paul yes that is the correct link. I gave the thermal paste "Arctic Silver" a go I used it sparingly (also on the CPU) I believe the chip is the graphics chip (ATI M52-P 216PNAKA13FG) The computer ran for several hours today and I ran a virus scan with the outdated trend Micro to give it some work and the CPU temp stayed around 40C and it was OK instead of 10 minutes so it looks like it is OK. Now I will update the software:- SP3, Internet security windows updates etc. Anyone following this thread the service manual for "TravelMate4220/2480&Aspire5600/3680" can be found here
http://www.acersupport.com/acerpanam/ma ... 0_BOOK.pdf
Thanks again Paul for your help.

 

Hi there,

Glad to hear that you have solved your problem!!

Certainly sounds a touch bizarre that such an obvious item has been left out during manufacture, and it could go some way to explain numerous other faults people are having with lock ups and frozen PCs!

Cheers

Paul :ugeek: